Interview Questions and Answers: The art of answering interview questions

Interview questions are challenging, because you have to maintain your context. The interview answer must be understandable to the interviewers and cover the whole of the interview questions in the required depth.

Interview answers are constructed. Every piece is supposed to fit together, and answer the interview question in full. The idea is to give a response that sounds good, and has good quality information.

Interview questions are designed to get a lot of information. If your interview answers flow well, you'll find that you're more comfortable with the interview, and your performance improves noticeably. You can express yourself much more effectively, which raises the value of your interview answers.

Fluency and clarity

The primary skills in good interview techniques are fluency and clarity. Fluency is achieved by good construction of interview answers. Clarity is really a matter of practice, and doing some strict real-time quality control on your interview answers.

Fluency and construction of your interview answers.

How you express yourself is extremely important. Think of the sentence 'The cat sat on the mat'. It's a very simple sentence. There's no doubt of the subject, or what happened.

Much more to the point, you, as the speaker, are easily aware of what you're saying, and can keep your interview answer organized and coherent.

That's the key to fluent interview answers.

You don't have to 'dumb down' your interview answers. (Nor should you, because you devalue your information, sometimes seriously.) You do, however, have to avoid getting yourself in a position where you're not sure what you're telling the interviewers.

Clarity and expression of your interview answers

Each interview answer needs thought and some attention to the clearest possible way of giving your answer. This process becomes much easier with practice. You'll find that with time, you'll be able to put together a good clear interview answer within seconds of hearing the interview question.

Explaining scenarios in 'Who What Where When' terminology, ' Who did what, where and when.'

Objectivity, setting out unambiguous statements of goals.

Negative characteristics

No extraneous information or subjects.

Nothing off topic

Nothing out of sequential order (non sequiteurs are particularly confusing in interviews)

Speaking- Speech practice for interviews

Even speaking while giving an interview answer needs some practice. Speaking to interviewers isn't like a normal conversation. You have to make sure that you're heard correctly, having achieved the right degrees of fluency and clarity.

It's worth your while practicing with a friend, or getting formal interview training, to make sure you get enough experience putting your interview answers together. At higher levels of employment, the interview questions get a lot harder, and the interview answers get much longer.